Build Slicer application--Compiling and installing Slicer from source

As of early 2018, Slicer migrated to Qt5. Qt4 support was removed in version 4.11.（从Slicer的4.11版开始删除了对Qt4的支持）See instructions at this labs page for the new requirements: https://www.slicer.org/wiki/Documentation/Labs/Qt5-and-VTK8

The prerequisites listed below are required to be able to configure/build/package/test Slicer.

Windows

Common Prerequisites：

CMake >= 3.13.4（这边会有一个坑，下面说）
Git >= 1.7.10
- CMake must be able to find git.exe and patch.exe. If git is installed in the default location then they may be found there, but if they are not found then either add the folder that contains them to PATH environment variable; or set GIT_EXECUTABLE and Patch_EXECUTABLE as environment variables or as CMake variables at configure time.（默认在安装了Git之后只有git.exe的路径添加到了PATH环境变量中，所以一般要手动把patch.exe的路径也添加进去，后面Cmake要用到）
Subversion (SVN) client: any SVN client that has command line tools
- SlikSvn , or
- TortoiseSVN - make sure you install Command line client tools component (disabled by default)
NSIS (optional):Needed if packaging Slicer - Click here to download. Make sure you install the language packs.（最后在编译了Slicer的package工程后会生成一个.exe的安装文件）
Qt5: Download qt-unified-windows-x86-online.exe and install Qt along with qtscript and qtwebengine components. For building with VS2015, Qt version 5.10.x or older is required. For more details, read step-by-step guide.（这边安装教程一步一步来就可以，因为是在线安装，可能因为网速慢下载失败）

Tested and recommended build environment：

VS2015
- Make sure you enable installation of component Programming languages / Visual C++ / Common Tools for Visual C++ 2015 (in some distributions, this option is not enabled by default)（推荐下载官网上的安装包）
- Installation of Cumulative Servicing Release for Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Update 3 (KB3165756) is required on some older VS2015 distributions
Qt 5.10
CMake >= 3.13.4（此时Cmake的最新版本是3.14.0，所以刚开始我下了最新版，然而在用Cmake生成解决方案时，生成器的选择对生成器的类型和位数作了分开，一个选了Visual Studio 14 2015，另一个选了X64，可是在build的过程中会出错，提示机器位数和工程位数有冲突，error LNK1112: module machine type 'x64' conflicts with target machine type 'X86' 。所以后来换了Cmake的低版本3.13.4，这个版本生成器的类型和位数是在一起的Visual Studio 14 2015 Win64，这次就可以成功完成build）

Experimental/deprecated build environments：

Visual Studio 2017 (Community or any other edition) with VS2015 build tools (tested, works well)
- When configuring Visual Studio installer, enable installation of component VC++ 2015.3 v14.00 (v140) toolset for desktop
- Visual Studio 2015 toolset must be set in CMake: Optional toolset to use (argument to -T) need to be set to v140
Cygwin (untested, probably does not work)
- Cygwin suite (building with cygwin gcc not supported, but the cygwin shell environment can be used to run git, svn, etc).

CHECKOUT slicer source files

Check out the code using git and configure the git svn bridge:

While it is not enforced, we strongly recommend you to AVOID the use of SPACES for both the source directory and the build directory. We mean it.（尽量不要在路径中有空格）
Due to maximum path length limitations during build the build process, source and build folders must be located in a folder with very short total path length. This is expecially critical on Windows and MacOS. For example, C:DS4 for source and C:DS4R for release-mode build folder works on Windows; and /sq5 has been confirmed to work on MacOS.（尽量减少路径长度）

1. Clone the github repository

cd MyProjects
git clone git://github.com/Slicer/Slicer.git

The Slicer directory is automatically created after cloning Slicer.

2. Setup the development environment:

cd Slicer
./Utilities/SetupForDevelopment.sh

For more details see Development With Git.

On Windows enter the commands above in to a bash shell, such as Git Bash (part of msysgit) or use a Git client with a graphical user interface.

3. Configure the git svn bridge to ensure the mapping with svn revision.

git-svn is only required for core developers with svn access - other people can skip it.

cd Slicer
git svn init http://svn.slicer.org/Slicer4/trunk
git update-ref refs/remotes/git-svn refs/remotes/origin/master
git checkout master
git svn rebase

If you plan to compile Slicer to develop your own extensions and test these extensions on Slicer releases, it is convenient to download the source code directly from SVN and specify the revision number corresponding to the release you want. To do so, replace <MARKER> and <SVNREVISION> in the command below with the selected revision and marker:

svn co http://svn.slicer.org/Slicer4/<MARKER> Slicer-r<SVNREVISION> -r <SVNREVISION>

 Release             SVN revision#       Marker
 4.10.0              27501               trunk
 4.8.1               26813               branches/Slicer-4-8
 4.8.0               26489               trunk
 4.6.2               25516               branches/Slicer-4-6
 4.5.0-1             24735               trunk
 4.4                 23774               trunk
 4.3.1               22599               branches/Slicer-4-3
 4.3.0               22408               trunk

More corresponding SVN revision numbers can be found here and here. The <MARKER> can be found at the bottom of this page http://viewvc.slicer.org/viewvc.cgi/Slicer4?view=revision&revision=SVNREVISION by replacing SVNREVISION with the selected revision.

For example, to checkout the source code associated with revision 4.8.1, you would use the following command:

svn co http://svn.slicer.org/Slicer4/branches/Slicer-4-8 Slicer-r26813 -r 26813

（因为我之前是在win7下编译过slicer4.7.0 的debug版本，在其上开发的extensions想要移植到发行版上，所以刚开始我确实是想要要编译一个release版本的Slicer来开发和测试自己的extensions。但是在采用上述的svn co的命令行方式获取源码的过程中会有错误出现，试了几次都没有成功。因此，我会直接在上述地址中https://www.slicer.org/wiki/Release_Details的GitHub上clone或者下载zip格式的源码，然后进行编译）

CONFIGURE and generate Slicer solution files

There are many ways of customizing Slicer's user interface or feature set. This section describes how a custom Slicer build can be configured at build-time. See an overview of various other options in this presentation.

You can configure and generate Slicer solution files using either ccmake or cmake-gui. To streamline this process, you can also use the SlicerCustomAppTemplate project maintained by Kitware.

Customizing application build

Customized editions of Slicer can be generated without changing Slicer source code, just by modifying CMake variables:

SlicerApp_APPLICATION_NAME: Custom application name to be used, instead of default "Slicer". The name is used in installation package name, window title bar, etc.
Slicer_DISCLAIMER_AT_STARTUP: String that is displayed to the user after first startup of Slicer after installation (disclaimer, welcome message, etc).
Slicer_DEFAULT_HOME_MODULE: Module name that is activated automatically on application start.
Slicer_DEFAULT_FAVORITE_MODULES: Modules that will be added to the toolbar by default for easy access. List contains module names, separated by space character.
Slicer_CLIMODULES_DISABLED: Built-in CLI modules that will be removed from the application. List contains module names, separated by semicolon character.
Slicer_QTLOADABLEMODULES_DISABLED: Built-in Qt loadable modules that will be removed from the application. List contains module names, separated by semicolon character.
Slicer_QTSCRIPTEDMODULES_DISABLED: Built-in scripted loadable modules that will be removed from the application. List contains module names, separated by semicolon character.
Slicer_USE_PYTHONQT_WITH_OPENSSL: enable/disable building the application with SSL support (ON/OFF)
Slicer_USE_SimpleITK: enable/disable SimpleITK support (ON/OFF)
Slicer_BUILD_SimpleFilters: enable/disable building SimpleFilters. Requires SimpleITK. (ON/OFF)
Slicer_BUILD_EMSegment: enable/disable building EM segmenter (ON/OFF)
Slicer_USE_PYTHONQT_WITH_TCL: TCL support (ON/OFF)
Slicer_EXTENSION_SOURCE_DIRS: Defines additional extensions that will be included in the application package as built-in modules. Full paths of extension source directories has to be specified, separated by semicolons.

Per-platform instructions

Windows

Recommended: run CMake (cmake-gui) from the Windows Start menu

Set the build directory. For example: C:Slicer-SuperBuild-Debug or C:Slicer-SuperBuild-Release.

Because Windows doesn't support file path longer than 260 characters and has a maximum command line length, please make sure that the total path name of your Slicer-build directory is no longer than 50 characters (for example c:workSlicerSlicer-SuperBuild may work). In case of any build error, use very short directory names: C:S4 for source directory, C:S4D for debug build, C:S4R for release build.
You cannot use the same build tree for both release or debug mode builds. If both build types are needed, then the same source directory can be used, but a separate build directory should be created and configured for each build type.

Select your compiler: Visual Studio 14 2015 Win64
Do not configure yet.
Add Qt5_DIR variable pointing to Qt5 folder such as C:Qt5.10.0msvc2015_64libcmakeQt5.
Configure
Click generate then close cmake-gui.
If building in release mode:
- Open the top-level Slicer.sln file in the build directory in Visual Studio
- Set active configuration to Release. Visual Studio will select Debug build configuration by default when you first open the solution in the Visual Studio GUI. If you build Slicer in release mode and accidentally forget to switch the build configuration to Release then the build will fail. Note: you can avoid this manual configuration mode selection by setting CMAKE_CONFIGURATION_TYPES to Release in cmake-gui.
If building in debug mode:
- Start Visual Studio using the Slicer launcher as described in Step-by-step debug instuctions
Build the ALL_BUILD project

Alternative option: Configure and build using command-line or batch file

Instead of using CMake (cmake-gui), it is also possible to configure by creating a .bat file that contains command-line instructions and run this .bat file each time a Slicer needs to be re-built. The examples below assume Slicer source code is in C:S4 folder and Qt-5.10 is installed in default location.

Visual Studio 2015 in Release mode:

mkdir C:DS4R
cd /d C:DS4R
"C:Program FilesCMakeincmake.exe" -G "Visual Studio 14 2015 Win64" -DQt5_DIR:PATH=C:Qt5.10.0msvc2015_64libcmakeQt5 C:DS4
"C:Program FilesCMakeincmake.exe" --build . --config Release

Visual Studio 2015 in Debug mode:

mkdir C:DS4D
cd /d C:DS4D
"C:Program FilesCMakeincmake.exe" -G "Visual Studio 14 2015 Win64" -DQt5_DIR:PATH=C:Qt5.10.0msvc2015_64libcmakeQt5 C:DS4
"C:Program FilesCMakeincmake.exe" --build . --config Debug

Visual Studio 2017 with VS2015 toolset in Release mode:

mkdir C:DS4R
cd /d C:DS4R
"C:Program FilesCMakeincmake.exe" -G "Visual Studio 15 2017 Win64" -DQt5_DIR:PATH=C:Qt5.10.0msvc2015_64libcmakeQt5 C:DS4
"C:Program FilesCMakeincmake.exe" --build . --config Release

General information

Two projects are generated by either cmake, ccmake or cmake-gui.

One of them is in the top-level bin directory Slicer-SuperBuild and the other one is in the subdirectory Slicer-build:

Slicer-SuperBuild/Slicer-build

The first project in Slicer-SuperBuild manages all the external dependencies of Slicer (VTK, ITK, Python, ...). To build Slicer for the first time, run make (or build the solution file in Visual Studio) in Slicer-SuperBuild, which will update and build the external libraries and if successful will then build the subproject Slicer-build.
The second project in Slicer-SuperBuild/Slicer-build is the "traditional" build directory of Slicer. After local changes in Slicer (or after an svn update on the source directory of Slicer), only running make (or building the solution file in Visual Studio) in Slicer-SuperBuild/Slicer-build is necessary (the external libraries are considered built and up to date).
Warning: An significant amount of disk space is required to compile Slicer in Debug (>10GB on Windows)

Workaround for if the firewall is blocking git protocol

Some firewalls will block the git protocol. A possible workaround is to configure Slicer by disabling the option Slicer_USE_GIT_PROTOCOL. Then the http protocol will be used instead. Consider also reading https://github.com/commontk/CTK/issues/33

BUILD Slicer

After configuration, start the build process in the Slicer-SuperBuild directory

Windows (Visual Studio)

Start Windows Explorer. Need help?

Open Slicer-SuperBuildSlicer.sln in Visual Studio
Select build configuration. Usually Release or Debug
Select menu Project -> Build Solution

If you make local changes to Slicer, open the solution file located in the directory Slicer-SuperBuild/Slicer-build instead. You should then be able to either build all projects or just a specific one.

RUN Slicer

Windows

Start Windows Explorer. Need help?

Run Slicer-SuperBuild/Slicer-build/Slicer.exe

Notes:

Windows: If build was OK, but Slicer doesn't start (e.g. gives the error: [bin/Release/SlicerQT-real.exe] exit abnormally - Report the problem.) then one possible root cause is that you have a copy of Python26.dll in your windows system directory (e.g., c:WindowsSystem32python26.dll). The solution is to rename or remove the python dll in the system directory. See more details here: http://www.na-mic.org/Bug/view.php?id=1180

TEST Slicer

After building, run the tests in the Slicer-SuperBuild/Slicer-build directory

Windows (Visual Studio)

Start Windows Explorer. Need help?

Open Slicer-SuperBuildSlicer.sln in Visual Studio
Select build configuration. Usually Release or Debug
In the Solution Explorer, right click on RUN_TESTS project and then select Build

Note: RUN_TESTS project can be found in the CMakePredefinedTargets folder. See here for more details.

PACKAGE Slicer

Windows (Visual Studio)

Note: Make sure to patch VS2008 using the script fix-vc9-redist-manifests.ps1
Start Windows Explorer. Need help?

Open Slicer-SuperBuildSlicer-buildSlicer.sln in Visual Studio
Select Release build configuration.
In the Solution Explorer, right click on PACKAGE project in group CMakePredefinedTargets and then select Build

Note: PACKAGE project can be found in the CMakePredefinedTargets folder. See here for more details.

来自：https://www.slicer.org/wiki/Documentation/Nightly/Developers/Build_Instructions